If you want my 2¢ worth

Citation

Corson-Finnerty, A. (2002), "If you want my 2¢ worth", The Bottom Line, Vol. 15 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2002.17015caf.002

If you want my 2¢ worth

Edited by Kent C. Boese, Arts Cataloger, Cataloging Services Department, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Washington, DC, USA

Keywords: Librarians, Financial management, Funding, Sponsorship, Fund-raising

TBL interviews Vartan Gregorian, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Vartan is former president of Brown University, and of the New York Public Library, and former-provost of the University of Pennsylvania.

TBL: What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Gregorian: During my eight years at the helm of the New York Public Library, I was proud of our successful campaign that resulted in the renovation and rejuvenation of the library. We increased its endowment, collections, hours, and services for both research libraries and branch libraries. But I was most proud to witness the library's revival as the "people's palace" – reaffirming its central place in the city's civic and cultural life. In our democratic society, the library stands for hope, for learning, for progress, for literacy, for self-improvement and for civic engagement. The library is a symbol of opportunity, citizenship, equality, freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and hence, is a symbol for democracy, itself.

TBL: Who are your heroes in real life?

Gregorian: First, my grandmother. Despite the strains and deprivations of poverty, war and loss, she raised me with the right values. She was a living book of ethics. Among the many things she taught me was that earthly belongings are ephemeral – as are, unfortunately, vigor and beauty. What endures, she said, are good deeds and reputation: one's name and one's dignity. Envy deforms character; she used to say, "You must not have a hole in your eye." Such a hole cannot be filled, as envy is insatiable. She also taught me the importance of knowledge not only as a means for making a living but also as a means to moral autonomy. That respect for knowledge changed my life.

As a professor of history, I admired Margaret Sanger who fought for women's rights for a half century and around the world. She was a pioneer, and of all America's contributions, one of the most lasting will be our championing the rights of women for the rest of humanity. I admire Winston Churchill's courage and tenacity, against all odds, during the Second World War. And I admire George Marshall for exhibiting such statesmanship in leading the US effort to rebuild Europe after the war rather than washing our hands of the defeated nations. Gandhi and Martin Luther King taught me the incredible force of ideas and of passive resistance. Another one of my heroes is John Gardner, who combined the best of human traits, including leadership, generosity, integrity, and intelligence.

And, finally, all of my teachers are my heroes: elementary and secondary school teachers and my professors at Stanford University. They gave me an education.

TBL: What writings on financial management best inform you to do your job?

Gregorian: I find it best to read as widely as I can. Usually, I read three or four daily newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor and sometimes the Washington Post. On weekends, I often read Le Monde, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian and The Independent. As for magazines, I read The Economist, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times' Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New York Post, Library Journal, Public Libraries, Information Technology and Libraries, American Libraries, Daedalus, American Scholar, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, American Historical Review, Business Week, Forbes, Atlantic Monthly and occasionally Time or Newsweek.

TBL: What do you think of corporate sponsorships? While they bring significant funds to libraries, do they threaten the library's neutrality?

Gregorian: Corporations don't add prestige to the library; it is the library that adds prestige to corporations that sponsor library events. I have no problem with corporate sponsorship – so long as corporations don't interfere with the mission of the library, its openness, its institutional integrity, try to manipulate its outreach or cheapen its dignity through inappropriate commercialization.

TBL: In 20 years, will libraries purchase (as opposed to license or lease) any information resources?

Gregorian: No doubt there will be major changes in the relationship between libraries and producers of library materials. The time may even come when libraries have to charge authors, publishers and other companies for stocking their books and materials – much as supermarkets charge food producers for shelf space today. But libraries are in the business of making things available to the general public. If they cannot license or lease materials, they will purchase them if they are needed to help fulfill the library's mission.

TBL: What do you perceive to be the most compelling financial concern facing libraries in the next five years? How would you address this issue?

Gregorian: Libraries operate in a mixed economy. They have to provide materials in print, audio, video and electronic forms – archiving vast amounts of information and knowledge. Modes of transmission and retrieval are constantly changing and libraries have to be leaders in the use and teaching of technology. Hence, libraries will need additional funds. Librarians must make sure people understand that libraries are totally integrated, multidisciplinary, multi-media learning centers of knowledge and information that benefit society – individuals and organizations, corporations and governments. Libraries are not cost centers so much as essential investments in education and knowledge, which enhance our society. As long as people know the value of libraries – as both depositories and disseminators of knowledge and information – libraries will keep their centrality in our society.

TBL: What do you think libraries can do or offer to make better funding of libraries a higher priority in our society?

Gregorian: First of all, we must remind public authorities that the library is not an auxiliary institution, but rather a central one in our society. Andrew Carnegie saw the free library as "the cradle of democracy", and in this regard, my fellow educators – librarians, information scientists and all communicators of culture and creators of knowledge – continue to rock the cradle, even as it moves into cyberspace. We must not let the library be taken for granted. After all, the library is not only an information center, but also a knowledge center, freely disseminating knowledge and learning in all the realms of music, video, theater, dance, literature, science, history, humanities – and the list goes on. The library is the DNA of our civilization, and is one of the few institutions that integrates and embodies the entire human experience. As the poet Richard Armour writes, libraries are where people "lower their voices and raise their minds".

Second, we must also remind public authorities that the average taxpayer pays an average of only $23 a year for library services. And Americans, it turns out, go to libraries more than twice as often as they go to the movies. One reason for their popularity is that our libraries are continually expanding and enriching their services. In San Leandro, California, the Main Library will serve you an excellent cup of coffee to go with your book. In Detroit, you can obtain a copy of a patent far more quickly than from the US Patent Office. In Philadelphia, the Free Library faxes articles and other information to homes and offices. Each week, the Jersey City Free Public Library (http://www.chapteraday.com/library/Jersey) e-mails its patrons the first few chapters from a new book, which can then be checked out at the library. In San Francisco, the new library provides 400 electronic workstations and has capacity for 700 more. Libraries are leading the effort to close the digital divide, as nearly every public library provides free access to the Internet. In fact, libraries are the number one point of online access for people who lack computers and Internet accounts.

Third, librarians must hold their ground. They are professionals, so they must act like professionals. By that I mean they must refuse to sacrifice their professional standards for short-term gain or expediency. When standards and service decline, we know that the public ceases to respect the importance of librarians and libraries.

TBL: If money were no object, what is the most significant change that you would institute in a library?

Gregorian: I would put an auditorium in every library. This would permit more libraries to hold lecture series, film series, concerts, authors' readings and exhibitions. I would also extend library hours, keeping them open about 14 hours a day. After all, so much has been spent to create them, we should enjoy them to the fullest. And, finally, I would also make sure every local library had a major computer center, ensuring that patrons could transcend the local limitations with the Internet's global reach.

TBL: What fund-raising activities have worked for your library?

Gregorian: When I was President of the New York Public Library from 1980-1988, our most successful social event was the Literary Lions Dinner, which honored the achievements of writers. We held the dinner once a year in the reading rooms of the library. Twenty-one authors dined with library patrons at 21 tables, for which sponsors had contributed $10,000 to $25,000 each. The authors signed and gave away copies of their books, which their publishers donated. After dinner, we often had an actor perform a dramatic reading of a literary work. But we did not rely entirely on the social elite, every year we also held a two-day holiday party to welcome citizens to their library, thank them for their support and encourage their contributions.

TBL: What will be the impact of the rising cost of serials?

Gregorian: Speaking both as a former librarian and a former President of a university, I realize that the rising cost of serials is a major concern for everyone. I compare the serial problem to Philadelphia's taxi system. As taxi fares rise, fewer Philadelphians use taxis, creating a spiral of ever-rising fares and ever-decreasing ridership. It has already become less expensive to rent a car for a day in Philadelphia than hire a few taxis. The same sort of shift might happen to serials. As their circulations decline and prices rise, universities may bypass the commercial system altogether. They might band together and publish their own professional journals; after all, most of the contributions come from members of their own faculties. The journals might then be distributed via the Internet to university and other libraries.

TBL: How important are digitalization projects to your organization?

Gregorian: When I was at the New York Public Library, the library put a high priority on computerization of the catalog and on increasing electronic access. Digitalization is very important for access and for preservation but, of course, it is also important not to overlook improving access and preservation of materials that cannot be digitalized.

TBL: What has been the hardest decision you have had to make in your career?

Gregorian: To leave the New York Public Library.

TBL: If your budget were decreased by 10 percent, what would your response be?

Gregorian: I would never cut the acquisitions budget, as the damage cannot be easily undone, especially for research libraries. But library hours, once reduced, can always be increased.

TBL: From your years of service in the profession, is there one piece of advice on fiscal responsibility that you would like to give today's library managers-to-be?

Gregorian: Don't lower your expectations. Don't downplay the real cost of running a major library. In raising funds and public support, don't appeal to patrons' sense of guilt or their altruism alone – appeal to their intelligence, their civic spirit and their self-interest. For they may need to be reminded that the stronger the library is, the better opportunities that their communities will have.

TBL: What are the most important skills that new librarians need to succeed in the twenty-first century?

Gregorian: Librarians are not just information retrievers, they are mediators between information and knowledge. Hence, librarians must master the technology of accessing information and also be familiar with the content. This means that librarians require the best possible education both in matters of organization and retrieval technology and of content through the liberal arts.

I would also say that the time has come for library schools to teach financial management, with MBA-type programs for librarians. Libraries, after all, are becoming very complex businesses. More librarians should also obtain PhDs to help them discern content in history, philosophy, the basic sciences and so forth.

TBL: If you had an opportunity to do it all over again, would you still choose a career in this profession? Why or why not?

Gregorian: Librarians are also teachers, part of the noble profession of education. So if the clock were turned back to 1958, when I graduated from Stanford, I would still choose to be an educator, becoming either a professor or a librarian, but always a teacher, for teachers help create the future.